Forrester’s Smart City Tweet Jam was a great success. On Tuesday morning/afternoon/evening, smart city followers around the globe participated in an hour of intense tweeting on smart cities. We touched on a range of issues from the definitions of a “city” and a “smart city” and the evolution toward the goal of becoming smart to the challenges city leaders face and the business models that enable adoption of technology-based solutions. We ended with a contrarian view that “smart cities” might just be a fade. But that was quickly refuted with reminders of the growing challenges faced by cities and the imperative of facing these challenges in a sustainable manner.

One hour, 62 Twitterers, and 389 tweets later we were exhausted – at least I was. But we were pleased to have aired and shared our opinions about the challenges, the potential solutions to those challenges, and the paths and business models that will make those solutions possible in the short-run, and hopefully sustainable in the longer term. Below are some excerpts from the conversation. But there were many interesting points of view and contributions to the discussion. I've included here a visual representation of the key words and topics discussed during the Tweet Jam, created using ManyEyes. For the more stats and the full transcript, check out #smartcityjam.

Here are some of the questions and response excerpts from the Smart City Tweet Jam, #smartcityjam: